Sunday, September 30, 2007

Tim’s Winter Wargaming Weekend

I had previously mentioned the idea of running a mini-con or invitational wargame weekend (Here). I’ve been doing some more thinking about this and thought I ought to start setting things down in stone (or at least pixels…) planning-wise. Tentatively I am planning for the weekend of 22-23-24 February 2008 (though there is a slight chance this may be moved up to the last weekend of January – depending on the availability of some potential participants).

While I had alluded to the idea of a campaign or theme weekend, I think the format I’ll use for the first one is an “open gaming” weekend. In the future I’d like to run mini-campaigns of a series of 4 or 5 linked scenarios. I just don’t think I’m going to have enough stuff together for one by the time the new year rolls around and I promised myself I would no longer volunteer to run games for conventions (even my own!) that I don’t have all the stuff I’d need for the game ready to go at the time I promise to run them (so there’s no frantic late-night painting for the week or two prior to the convention just to get things finished up!). The exact games that will be run will depend on who else volunteers to run games and what stuff I have ready a little closer to the weekend when I firm up the schedule. My goal is to have enough games planned and ready to go so that if all the other people that have offered to run games bail at the last moment there will still be a weekends worth of games to be played!

So for an “open gaming” format it would be ideal if I had 4 or 5 participants. Each could run one game during the weekend and the others could play. That way everyone is guaranteed to play at least one game that they love (their own! – though hopefully all will be interesting) and have 4 or 5 committed players.

If somehow I ended up with more than six I could probably open up a second table in my garage or in the downstairs kitchen and there could be a choice or two games in each time slot…. Just like a “real” convention….

The benefit of this format is that if some people couldn’t be here for Friday night, or had to leave early on Sunday, or couldn’t make any of the games in between there wouldn’t be any problems with continuity of command or whatever…

I imagine the weekend would go something like this:

Friday Night

6:00 – meet at my place for supper – Tim’s yummy home made pizza!

7:00 - Game #1

Saturday

9:00 – 12:00 Game #2

12:00 – 1:00 lunch

1:00 – 5:00 Game #3

5:00 – 7:00 Supper… somewhere…

7:00 – Game #4

Sunday

10:00 – Game #5

(lunch break – snacks and CAKE!! Mmmmm, cake…)

So here are some of the games I could potentially run:

Blitzkrieg Commander – either in North Africa or NWE involving British Paras.

Cold War Commander – Vietnam, Modern Africa, World War Three in the late ‘80’s.

Savage Worlds – either an historical skirmish – Vietnam, Modern Ops, World War Two, etc, or some sort of Pulp Adventure or Victorian Horror game.

Great War Commander – Vimy, Paschendale, etc or the Russian Civil War

Obviously I have a lot more stuff, but this it what I have that I’d be willing and able to run for a group of up to six. I’ll firm up exactly what I’m going to run and what each scenario is about, as we get closer to the New Year. As I said I’m going to plan to have five games ready to go, however if anyone else wants to bring and run a game that would be cool too!

If YOU want to run a game here’s what would be required of you…

You need to provide or arrange for all the materials required to play.

The game you run should be simple and fast-playing. Simple enough for an idiot like me to be able to pick it up and play it with no previous experience. Fast-playing enough to bring the scenario to a satisfactory conclusion within the allotted time and also to keep everyone on their toes and involved and not wandering away from the table.

You should be able to organize your game in such a way that it could be able to accommodate between two (you and me) and six players, as I have no idea right now how many people might want to show up for this.

Game length: maximum of 3 to 5 hours depending on which time slot its in.

Below is a link to a really great article about running a good convention game – I think all the suggestions would apply here…

I’m going to say I’m not going to limit games to miniature war games, though that is obviously my preference. I could be talked into a board wargame. It should meet all of the criteria above – fast-playing, simple, accommodate 2 to 6 players…. (So yeah, John, you could bring some sort of C&C game and run a big multi-player battle..).

Stay tuned for further info as the next couple of months roll by… If you’re interested in attending let me know.

Once again any questions, comments, ideas, etc. please feel free to post them below!